Low Down Dirty Shame
by SydnieWren
Summary: Slice of life on a rainy night in Gotham and Blüdhaven. Tim and Kon have a heart-to-heart, Jason takes out a hit, and Dick is on duty.


**Hey all! This is my first Bat-work, so I hope it's alright. I'm more a casual than dedicated fan, so if the timelines aren't perfect here, my apologies! I hope you enjoy it.  
**

**Warnings: sex, references to rape, references to torture, PTSD.**

**Disclaimer: don't own.**

* * *

_"It's not fair," Tim said, and seemed to mean it, "I can't just - read you, read your body like that."_

He motioned to his eyes, two fingers spread, and then turned them against Kon's chest. Airy golden sunshine passed through the petals of the wild buttercups in the jar on the sill above the sink.

"I don't always mean to," Kon countered falteringly.

"But sometimes you do."

"Yeah, sometimes I do."

* * *

It reminded Dick of the long trowels they used to slide loaves of bread into those low-arched brick ovens, and made him faintly nauseous. Worse yet, though there were certainly provisions against eating and drinking in the morgue, the technicians always seemed to be chewing, gum or something else, their jaws grinding and snapping as they stood alongside the gaping metal drawers containing cadavers.

"Any ID on her, yet?"

He kept his arms crossed against the cold. The young man in scrubs, still vacantly chewing, shook his head.

"Nope. Boss says we're only keeping it here another day, too, so..."

"Her, chum," Dick muttered, "keeping _her_."

"Right."

She hadn't been anyone, not so far as Dick had been able to determine. They had found her in the bay on regular patrol, blue and bloated and faintly translucent, her skin as thin and fragile as soaked paper. Always his instincts militated toward conspiracy - drugs, weapons, human trafficking, something seedy but formal that could be, with diligence, unearthed. But so far they had turned up no leads, even after her fingers had been dehydrated enough to collect decent prints.

"And - birthmarks, scars, tattoos -"

"Nada," the tech intoned, shrugging. At the foot of the shelf a plastic tag read: JANE DOE 11-6-10.

"Alright," Dick sighed, after a moment, dropping a hand to his pocket for his keys, "alright, thanks again."

"No problemo."

The shelf groaned shut on its slick metallic treads. Dick parted his mouth to speak as the last echo faded against the pale green tile. But the technician had turned his back to him, returning to the log on the desk to account for having opened and shut the drawer, and by the time he returned, soft shoes shuffling, Dick had nothing to say.

* * *

Mid-November, cold as ice, and of _course_ it would be raining sometime after midnight, and how: lightening flickered briefly, and then thunder churned the earth. Jason ducked under the fluttering red hotel awning and shook off his jacket before shouldering through the revolving door.

_Classy joint._

Painted ceilings soared high above the marble tile polished to a reflective shine, dripping chandeliers of long, pendulous crystal. A fountain in the lobby gushed incessantly from the mouths of stone dolphins, and Jason thought the echo cavernous, familiar. He rounded its smooth lipped edge and checked in at the front desk, accepting an antique brass key with a dangling placard, then conducted himself into a bank of elevators, absently adjusting his shoulder strap.

"What floor, sir?"

A bellhop parted the accordion-style metal grate and held a gloved index finger poised above rows of shining metal buttons.

"Sixteen," Jason replied, surveying the key's placard hanging from his closed palm.

And he smiled as they rode in silence, because Bruce had _always_ fucked the bellhops, _always, _until Jason had begun joining him on his short business trips. For those few and precious years Bruce had fucked him, instead, clasped him tight in the clinically crisp sheets of master suite beds, and by the time Tim had come along, the eighties had ended, nouveau was out, and nobody used bellhops anymore, except this place.

Jason did most of his business there, haunted it, really, like a soul caught up in the place of its departure.

* * *

Alright, so it wasn't fair, and Kon _knew_ Tim didn't exactly approve of him peering through his skin and muscle to track the motions of his internal organs, but when he just - froze - like that, it was so difficult to pretend nothing was wrong.

"Tim?"

He seemed not to hear, though he looked up at Kon wide-eyed with his mouth parted and airless. Kon shifted his weight from both hands to one and brought the free palm up to the top of Tim's head, anchoring him.

"Keep - going," Tim said at last, and when he brought his hands up to grasp at Kon's biceps, they were cold and wet with nervous sweat.

"What's wrong, Tim?"

It wasn't fair, but he was watching the other's heart as it beat hard and wild, the thick ropey tubes clenching and gasping feverishly. Another flash of lightening filtered brightly through the slats of their blinds, and the organ seized again, only to resume its fluttering pounding momentarily. Tim was shining with sweat in the bluish, secondhand light of the city filtering through their bedroom window.

These, Kon realized dimly, were the situations in which people could be expected to pull out and take account of the situation dispassionately, but Tim was so goddamn _tight, _and he kept breathing _keep going. _Wheezing it, really, but Kon could feel the rush of his surging arteries inside him, and with every tentative short and shallow thrust Tim's body tensed tighter, and his hands moved desperately over every inch of skin in reach.

"Tim," Kon murmured, laying his forehead against his lover's, where he could feel a layer of sweat cooling to a sickly sort of sheen, "Tim, I love you, Tim."

He had never been particularly perceptive about the reception of his words, but at that moment - which, incidentally was also the apex of an uncannily powerful orgasm - he had the distinct feeling of speaking into an empty room.

* * *

At night the bay was oily black and teeming with night-flying birds pecking at the carcasses of fish left on the wharf during the day. He had stopped at a gas station on his meandering drive home to pick up something to eat - a bottle of water and protein bar would simply have to do - and had thrown a plastic sleeve of wilted daisies on the counter as well, for lack of anything better to bring.

Now he tossed them into the water near the rocks where they had found her. The current pushed them back against the slick bank of crags and then consumed them, swallowing their white petals beneath the dark tide, where memory also concealed itself. Dick wished he could sink there too, where hidden knowledge gathered in underwater dunes.

_You can't save everyone, Dick._

He straightened on the bank. The memory returned to him as clear and present as though Wally were speaking to him from the shadowy water.

_Everyone? I'd settle for someone._

_Oh yeah? Start with yourself._

Since that - event, the night in the rain, when that woman had pinned him to the pavement and broken a years-long and meticulously guarded streak of faithfulness to Wally - he had been distant, fastidiously dedicated to his work, reticent and suspicious. On some level he knew he was quietly sabotaging the only relationship that he had ever found remotely fulfilling, but he had also come to the conclusion sometime ago that he couldn't tell Wally what had happened.

In part because he would understand. He would believe it, or believe it in principle: he would believe, anyhow, that it was possible. But Dick knew there was no evidence, no substance, no shredded costume or conspicuous scar, and in his dreams when Wally confessed some similar experience to him, he was not convinced. And so he let it spread between them, a constant hesitation, something he meant to say but couldn't, parting them further each day by measures of silence and memory.

Dick crossed the wet gravel of the bank and slid back into his patrol car, pausing briefly before starting the ignition as his exhaustion set in and voices hummed in his radio. The moon was high and wide and had stirred the lazy current; presently banks of garbage butted against the black crags, and he absently scanned its jostling profile. In the crevice of two sloping rocks a pair of arches intersected, one slightly warped, only faintly visible against the dark water. When one of them fell backward as if on a hinge, Dick's thoughts rose for the first time that evening above the level of dizzy background noise.

_A handle._

He plucked his radio out of its charger and stationed it on his belt before returning to the bank, digging the heels of his shoes into the rock to stay upright in the loose soil. He leaned into the rocks, catching himself with a palm to a cold stone peak, and then lowered himself between, where he had seen the strange-shaped silhouette in the moonlight. Among the beer cans and empty fast food cups, half-buried under a dissolving raft of tattered cardboard, he discerned the bobbing shape of a ladies' handbag, faded blue, with rounded handles.

* * *

"Do you mind if I smoke?" the man asked, mopping at his shining forehead with a monogrammed handkerchief. Jason watched him from his position on the hotel room sofa, where he reclined easily, knees open, arms crossed.

"It's your party," he returned flatly.

"Right." He produced a heavy silver cigarette case and clumsily withdrew a stick, then fumbled with the thing sliding it back into his pocket before patting himself down for a lighter. When finally he found it he lit up and sighed heavily, reddening from his plump cheeks to his bald head.

"I don't mean to rush you," Jason said after the man's third shaky drag, "but let's get down to business. You have a job for me?"

"I, uh, yes," he stammered, pacing. "I heard about you through some friends."

"Who can I thank for the recommendation?" Jason inquired lightly.

"I think I'd better not say."

"Good call."

A hush settled over the man and he shrugged out of his blazer, slinging it over the back of a chair. He lingered there silently for a moment, and then turned again to Jason, speaking in a torrent of stuttering syllables, each sound tumbling over the other.

"I'm just in a hard situation!" he cried, "It's just - not - tenable anymore! You know I brought up divorce. She didn't _listen. _She just - she says, she keeps mentioning the kids, saying - she keeps saying - it's just not possible. It has to end."

"Lawyers are cheaper than hits," Jason supplied.

"I _tried_ everything I could! I - I - we were even separated! But my secretary, my Jenny - she turned up, just last week - dead! - and -"

"And you wanna cut ties and skip town," Jason muttered, mostly to himself, "Got it."

"I can't have anyone _looking_ for me," he insisted hastily, "If they come _looking_ for me, they'll - she's such a vengeful bitch - she'll frame me, they'll try to get into the bank accounts, and -"

Jason waited patiently for him to finish, watching the ceiling. When at last he drew breath, he looked up, nodding.

"You got pictures?"

"_Pictures?_ What on earth -"

"Pictures. Photos. Of the people you want done."

Again the man scrambled uselessly in his pockets, rifling through his slacks and jacket before at last extending his wallet in a sweaty grasp, parted to reveal a few plastic sleeves of tiny photographs, mostly miniatures of school and church directory pictures. Jason accepted it, drawing it near to memorize their faces.

A wife, older now, roundish and soft with middle age, and two children, a bowl-cut boy and a girl with glasses. He surveyed the images slowly, aware of the man's nervous stare. Maybe there was some shadow of unhappiness there, the specter of suburban malcontent, but mainly he noted their smiles, all dimples and gap-teeth, the contours of their lives visible in the neatly pressed shirts and the carefully combed hair.

"Well?" he demanded, "Do you think - you can help?"

"You've got a beautiful family," Jason said, and has he spoke he looped his finger over the trigger of his gun, concealed beneath the fold of his leather jacket, and he did not look up as he fired, even as the blood sprayed the upper corner of a sixth grade graduation photo filled with balloons.

* * *

Coffee was a little complicated, but he could make hot chocolate, so long as it was the single-packet sort that only required microwaving and mixing. Kon watched the digital clock count down to zero and removed the mug from the microwave slowly, with care. He thought of Tim's orgasm again just to convince himself that it had happened. It had been weak enough to miss.

"Hey," he smiled, returning to bed, where Tim lay dazed and vacant, burrowed in the blankets.

"Hey."

"Swiss miss," Kon announced, offering him the mug. Tim stared blankly for a moment before accepting it with a delayed smile.

"Thanks, Kon."

"No problem."

Kon settled onto the mattress, and though his first instinct was to reach out for Tim's shoulder, he hesitated, watching his still profile.

"Tim?" he asked gently, "Why was the sex so bad for you?"

A short huff of laughter erupted from Tim's throat, dissipating as quickly as it had come.

"It wasn't your fault," he replied slowly. "It - it wasn't your fault."

"Ok," Kon returned, "but why then?"

Tim swallowed and watched the remnants of the storm scatter rain across the windowpane.

"When I was younger," he began, then, swallowing thickly again, went on: "when I was fourteen, I was on - I let myself get into a bad situation, it wasn't Bruce's fault. I got captured by the Joker."

Kon tensed at the name _Bruce_, always suspicious when he was absolved of guilt. But he didn't argue. His expression grew grave, and, hands in his lap, he listened.

"I guess the plan was, I mean, I guess he wanted to brainwash me. So he was going to do it, with - you know what a cattle prod is, right?"

"Yeah," he replied, and envisioned the long black rods tipped with brass leads, though he could not yet bring himself to imagine how one may have been used on Tim.

"Well, it was a lot...a lot of that. A lot of electricity, some chemicals. About three days...he left it, he would leave it, he put it inside me overnight. It was on a timer, so...and I would see this flash. Really bright flash, right before it would - shock me. I guess that...that sort of thing, bright lights, just..."

Kon had been too preoccupied trying to process what he was hearing to notice that Tim's body was sagging, his shoulders gradually sloping forward, hands over his eyes. When he turned to look at him, he realized the other was crying, quietly, but with force.

_The lightening._

For the duration of their relationship Kon had noticed his scars, some of them pearly line-shaped memoirs of cuts and slices, others blistered opalescent patches from burns. And he had accepted them: theirs was a dangerous job. But now he could remember the spots he had seen - twin dots, some of them, a few pairs near the base of his sex, one aligned directly above his anus - and he began to imagine their origins, and his chest burned for air.

"Tim," he breathed, and did not resist, this time, the urge to reach out and hold him.

* * *

It had begun to rain.

An empty grocery sack stood in for an evidence bag. It didn't do shit in the way of keeping the handbag sterile, but it kept some of the river water from seeping into the seat of Dick's patrol car. He felt a surge of energy: even if this wasn't the lead that helped them nab her killer, he felt certain it would tell them who she was. Unlike most washups, the handbag was full, containing a wallet and a few money clips' worth of tightly wadded hundreds, along with the requisite makeup compacts and tampons. In regular robberies, ladies' purses were usually the first to be emptied, and nobody alive would let that amount of cash go unreported.

He eyed it as he sped toward the station house, as though it would dissipate into delusion if he let it out of his sight for too long. Luckily the roads were mostly empty, owing to the time of night and the incessant rain, but naturally, he scowled, _this_ would be the night some moron in a Thunderbird decided to tear up an urban road at eighty miles per hour.

Dick honestly considered just letting the guy go, but only briefly. Resolving to ticket the jerk for everything he possibly could, he switched on his sirens and jammed on the gas, swerving through gutters overflowing with rain to catch up.

_If he makes me chase him, so help me..._

The handbag knocked against the door as he took a sharp turn and he nearly lost the Thunderbird when he leaned to the side to right it again, though the wallet clattered into the floorboard. Dick came close to swearing, but the car pulled over, finally, in a spray of rainwater that drenched his windshield.

He climbed out with his jacket over his head in place of an umbrella, hoping to make it quick. He rounded the Thunderbird and spared only a half-second to admire it, rapping on the driver's side window with his radio.

And he had almost gotten out the entirety of "license and registration, please -" when he recognized, with a cold rush of surprise, the face.

"Well, lucky me. Officer Dickface. I was really pissed I was gonna have to kill a cop tonight, but now things are looking up."

"Jason?" Dick's stern cop posture sagged.

"In the flesh. What're you gonna do?"

"Well," Dick faltered, "I'm still writing you a ticket. You were driving like a total madman, Jason."

"Oh yeah? I'm not gonna pay it. Save paper, Dickhead. Go on. Scram."

Jason was dotted with droplets of blood, which wasn't terrifically unusual, but this was Bludhaven, not Gotham, and mayhem in his jurisdiction was regrettably difficult to ignore.

"You know, you'll get arrested when those tickets start adding up," Dick reminded him, slowly regaining his composure.

"Yeah, well, I'm legally dead, so something tells me I'm gonna be okay. Gonna call daddy?"

Nonetheless Dick felt compelled to write the ticket, even if he knew as well as Jason that nothing would come of it.

"Let me get in the car," he grunted, and Jason unlocked the doors, laughing, as Dick climbed in the passenger's side.

"What's the matter, Dickie? You look all shook up. Is this even your beat?"

"Breakthrough in a case," Dick replied, searching his pocket for a pen, "or at least, I think so." He leered at Jason from the corner of his eye. "You wouldn't know anything about - about a recent homicide, would you? Female, late twenties. Jane Doe."

Jason shrugged.

"You know I don't generally knock off bitches." He paused, thoughtful. "But."

"But?" Dick glanced up from his pad of tickets, eyes wide.

"Well, what was your breakthrough, huh? Gimme something to work with, here."

"Found a purse in the bay, but all its contents were there, and nobody's reported anything like it missing."

Jason was temporarily quiet. Dick watched the rain on the windshield mottle the shadows streaking across his face, and wondered, for a moment, at how young he really was.

"The name wouldn't be Jen, would it? Jenna, Jennifer, something like that?" Jason looked pointedly at him.

"Well, I haven't - uh, - I haven't checked yet," he admitted somewhat sheepishly, "I mean, I was just on my way -"

"Well, you should check. I've got it on good authority some scumbag got himself knocked off at The Delphine downtown tonight. If your girl's a Jen, I'd say the two are related."

"Wait, just wait here," Dick insisted, preparing to climb out, "I've gotta go check. Just hang on, alright?"

Jason was smiling bemusedly. "Go _home,_ Dickie-bird," he replied, "all this shit'll still be there tomorrow."

"Just - just hang on."

Dick hoisted his jacket up over his head as he returned to his patrol car to check the ID, taken aback by Jason's advice. It just wasn't like the man to come out with reasonable suggestions, but then again, he _was _trying to evade a ticket.

And thus Dick was not surprised when the Thunderbird's taillights flared and then faded in a spray of whirling runoff as Jason disappeared into the night.

But he didn't chase him, either: he had been right.

* * *

Something light and plotless about home improvement occupied the muted television screen. Kon held Tim against him in the flickering bluish light, one arm across his chest. He could feel Tim breathing, and when he focused he could sense his heart beating underneath layers of tight muscle, growing relaxed unsteadily by the hour.

Maybe there was something to say, but he couldn't think of it. The world seemed different now: the sound of the rain was harsher, more tinny; the night loomed darker and more permanent. Even Tim, who was by all accounts solid and substantial in his arms, felt lighter and vaguely delicate, as though his skin were permeable and bones porous.

"Kon," Tim breathed, and the former realized he had been squeezing him.

"Sorry," he murmured.

He felt jealous, and ashamed of that. It was perhaps in his nature to protect their monogamy as it was, but he knew very well that the torture hadn't been expressly sexual, even if it had taken that shape in order to violate Tim more acutely and that it had happened so far in the past as to predate Tim's sexuality at any rate. But still he thought of the burn scars, lighter than the rest of Tim's skin, and imagined the ones he could not see, deep inside, where Tim was raw and soft and vulnerable.

"Why didn't you tell me, Tim?" he asked at length, speaking softly into his black hair.

Tim shrugged listlessly.

"Just...didn't want to come off as...damaged, or anything," he sleep-slurred.

"What do you want me to do," Kon wondered aloud, "if it happens again?"

"Keep fucking," Tim replied, settling back against him with a half-groaned sigh. "It gets a little better every time."

Kon nodded and kissed his temple.

"Keep fucking," he repeated softly, nodding still, "ok."

* * *

As far as hitmen went, Jason's rates were reasonable. He had an amazing success rate, which allowed him to press for bonuses and surcharges when he felt like it, but on the scale from the absolute cheapest ex-cons looking for a buck to the professionals who took out senators and bank executives, he was squarely in the middle. Naturally he only accepted cash, and always upfront: thus he had taken the briefcase containing upwards of ten thousand dollars when he had split from the hotel, and nicked the guy's wallet as an afterthought.

_The problem is, I'm too fucking nice._

He held the wheel at noon and flipped open the black leather wallet, thumbing through the blood-spattered pictures until he came upon a driver's license.

_1612 Augusta Court._

If the home had been any closer to Gotham, Jason would've abandoned the project. He tended to lay low after unplanned hits, which meant spending time at various safehouses outside whatever city the murder had taken place in.

But he could stand to venture into the suburbs on the outer perimeter of Bludhaven, if only for the briefest of errands. He tapped the address into his GPS system and drove until the rain thinned to mist and the skyscrapers and highrises gave way to porch lights and neat gardens.

Lights were on in 1612 Augusta Court, and Jason surmised the woman inside had just found out that she had become a widow. He could see shapes moving through the windows, and so he ducked low as he approached the front door, estimating that the police would come by soon for her statement and fingerprints, all standard operating procedure, ma'am. He disengaged the lock on the briefcase full of cash the man had brought along to pay him with, and left it on the doorstep, where a battered mat read: WELCOME.

Maybe she deserved it, and maybe she didn't. Jason watched the glowing windows fade in his rear view mirror. He kept the wallet, though there was no cash inside, and he never used cards. The cash wasn't much in the grand scheme of things, but it was the last he could do for another pair of fatherless kids, now his, at least, in memory.

* * *

Half a lasagna was split between two plastic containers stacked neatly on the counter top. It was only when he saw them there, packed with care, that Dick realized how long it had been since he had eaten. Still he didn't feel up to it. An empty wineglass sat on the coffee table, where he supposed Wally had waited up for him for sometime before giving in and going to sleep.

But he had left a light on in the kitchen, just above the stove. Dick switched it off as he stepped out of his shoes, and felt a swell of expectation rise in his throat as he crept toward their bedroom.

_Maybe it's time to let him know._

Jason was a thug and a menace, but he was perceptive. And when he had noted that Dick seemed shaken, it was only half because of the breakthrough in the case. The entire reason it mattered so much to him to know the woman's name was that his own violation had been so utterly without witness, so entirely isolated, that he sometimes feared he had dreamed it into being.

He slipped into the darkened room and undressed in the slivers of city light glowing faintly through the blinds. Wally was beautiful in the dimness, his skin flawless and pale, with splashes of vague light shining on the crests of his body: nose, lips, chin, adam's apple. Dick drew near when he had stripped down to his boxers, and settled on the edge of the bed.

"Hey, handsome."

Wally stirred from sleep with a slow gasp that became a yawn.

"Long night?"

Dick glanced up at the window and nodded.

"Yeah, but we made some headway."

Wally no longer hoped aloud that he would be seeing more of Dick just because of advances in particular cases, and it stung. Dick ran a hand through his red hair tenderly.

"You think I could talk to you about something, Wally?" he ventured.

"Right...now?"

"Well, if you've got a minute."

Wally threw the blankets aside and Dick shuffled beneath them, kicking his boxers off before drawing the blankets up over his shoulders. He pressed his naked body against Wally's, and buried his nose in his hair.

"'M beat, Dick," Wally murmured.

"Tomorrow, then," he returned, his voice low and muffled.

"You're shivering, Dick. Are you cold? There's...a quilt..."

"Tomorrow," Dick repeated, or promised. Underneath the blankets, Wally wound his fingers with Dick's, holding them in an easy grasp. Dick ran the tips of his fingers over his lover's chest, felt his heartbeat, his warmth, and felt moored, anchored by it.


End file.
